Facebook Email Leaks Reveal The Demise of Language

Hey everyone. I’m – to use my colleague’s phrase after hearing me speak – on “death’s door” right now with the worst case of strep I think anyone on this planet has ever had.

So, today, I’m going to cheat a little and just link you to a Gawker article about the Facebook email leaks. It’s troubling enough that private and personal emails were sent to strangers because of a coding error. But, some of these emails made me weep for the future of communications. I know for years people have talked about text and IM and Twitter destroying grammar. I always took the view that while people short cut language in those areas, we’re still communicating through the written word more than ever before and that alone was cause for celebration.

Now, I’m not so sure. There were a few emails in this article that made me so dizzy due to a lack of punctuation and/or discernible thought, I couldn’t even read them. Of course, I shouldn’t be reading them in the first place! As Gawker said, [these] messages underline how deeply digital networks run through our lives, and how important online privacy has become.

And, with that, I’m going to crawl back into bed and whine and whimper myself to sleep.

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